‘Counting on’ is one of those skills that I didn’t understand needed to be taught until Baloo was probably 4 or something. I guess I just hadn’t thought of it and assumed kids would just pick up on the pattern of numbers. And some kids pick up on that really well! In fact, I noticed…
Sometimes you discover an activity that is perfect for your child in every way. It can be a very rare occasion, but when you find it, you have to just do it. Logi-Bear loves dinosaurs, wants to learn to read, has been enjoying sorting into syllable “teams”, and really likes having little cards and booklets…
Handwriting isn’t really a big focus for us in homeschooling but I do want my kids to be able to write legibly. I have horrible handwriting and always have. In fact, my first bad grade was handwriting in 3rd grade. I cried…a lot. Some people have good handwriting and some people don’t. So my goal…
There is something magical when kids learn that numbers move in patterns and they really only need to know 0-9. Showing kids the pattern of 10s unlocks a new world of math but it’s kind of confusing. Or really confusing. We recently tried to show Logi-Bear how 9 to 10 is just like 19 to…
Grammar is a really dry subject and I’m going to go ahead and admit that I don’t think I ever actually listened to my teachers when they talked about grammar. For the most part, I could write how I talk and get away with it (I do the same thing now too). Honestly, I didn’t…
Halloween signals the beginning of the holiday season and my kids, at least, are eager to get knee deep into holiday things. Luckily, I’ve had the Halloween printables this week to satisfy their holiday excitement! They’ve already changed their mind about their Halloween costumes about 4 times each. Baloo has decided to save a bunch…
For my 5-year-old, being a non-reader is one of his biggest frustrations (following when I tell him to get off video games). He feels left out because the rest of us can read and he cannot. I like to leave little notes lying around with words that he can read . (Cat, t-rex, his name,…
My kids have, historically, had the hardest time with skip counting. I swear, they’ve all given me the same look when I try to explain skip counting. Kind of like “This is so much harder than just counting by 1’s”. That really skeptical look, ya know?. And I get it, they just learned to count…
You want them to memorize their addition facts and they want to play. Just imagine if there was a way to do both. Ah but there is! Making addition fact practice a game can entice them to play and learn longer! We’ve done our fair share of addition games (St. Patricks Day Make 10, Finding Dory,…
I’ve never been big on mythological things until I started reading books like Harry Potter and Twilight (yes, I read and loved Twilight. Although, The Host by Stephenie Meyer is far far better). Anyway, after getting into some of these alternate realities I started enjoying reading about the myths and how they started. Vampire’s in…
I’m always searching for ideas to get my kids interested in practicing math. To be honest, 99% of the time that’s a computer game. I’ll take what I can get though! Since starting the LEGO math challenge, we are getting a lot more practice offline too. Phew! So don’t miss the rest of our LEGO Math…
Logi-Bear is just delving into the concept of place value and I’m finding that extra practice with it is very very helpful. He has accepted that when you are counting and hit a 9, you move up to the next 10. But I’m not convinced he understands why. We’re working with LEGO Place Value a…